ALLEN PARK — How is it that former Arkansas offensive line coach Kurt Anderson knows new Lions center Frank Ragnow is NFL-ready? Because he essentially treated him like a pro throughout Ragnow’s final season in Fayetteville.

“His senior year he had an internship that was, like, one class, that’s all he had,” said Anderson, who coached the Buffalo Bills’ O-line from 2013-15. “Literally, we set up a schedule for him, broke it down into what Eric Wood did during a typical week in Buffalo. He did his regimen based on an NFL schedule already. He understands how to prepare like a pro because he did that for a year.”

When Bob Quinn addressed the media after selecting Ragnow in Round 1, he talked about things like Ragnow’s toughness and effort — the usual tenets an NFL team looks for in its draft picks. Beyond that, Quinn mentioned three elements that likely helped Detroit settle on its new offensive lineman: Ragnow’s intelligence, his experience and the competition level he faced playing in the SEC.

The Lions believe that they are playoff-ready in Matt Patricia’s first season as head coach. So, if they were going to spend a first-round pick on a lineman, that player had to be prepared to compete immediately. Not after a year of seasoning, not midway through 2018. As soon as he stepped foot on the team’s Allen Park campus.

With 33 career starts under his belt, and with Anderson giving him a taste of NFL life while he was still a college player, Ragnow has that potential.

To get an even better sense of what type of player Detroit believes it drafted, though, we have to drift back to 2016.

Shortly after Arkansas routed Alcorn State on Oct. 1, a week before the Razorbacks faced a Saturday night showdown at No. 1 Alabama, Ragnow’s father, Jon, passed away suddenly due to a heart attack. Ragnow returned home to Victoria, Minnesota, to be with his family.

Bret Bielema and his wife, Jen, traveled with him. The then-Arkansas coach returned to Fayetteville in time for practice Monday, but Ragnow — understandably — stayed behind. His status for that trip to Alabama was of secondary concern. Anderson told him he didn’t need to get back to play, that he was more than welcome to remain with his family for a few extra days.

Ragnow wasn’t having it. “He was determined that he was going to play,” Anderson told The Athletic, “that his dad would want him to play.”

Aside from the emotional challenge of doing so, Ragnow also spent the week some 1,200 miles away from Arkansas’ practices. To make sure his center would be ready if he chose to suit up, Anderson stayed late in his office every day that week, cutting up film “just like I was going through the game plan” and then emailing the videos to Ragnow, so his center would know what the coaching staff was installing.

The only on-field work Ragnow had prior to the trip to Alabama was Arkansas’ Friday walk-through. He played, and played well, in Saturday night’s game.

“It’s amazing what he was able to do,” Anderson said. “I have the utmost respect for somebody like that, that, one, he wanted to do that in the first place, but to play at the level that he played at with no physical reps going into a week against a front seven that is, you know, full of No. 1 draft picks … to play the way he did was amazing.”

Ragnow still sounded emotional late Thursday night, in a conference call with Detroit media, when he was asked about his dad’s passing. “It’s tough, and it’s still tough. It’s only been a little over a year and a half,” he said. “I mean, he was my best friend. He was my biggest fan and, I mean, my dad, he’s incredible. It’s really, especially right now, it’s bittersweet. But I know he’s up there and he’s looking down on me and he’s proud as can be. I’m just going to keep trying to make him proud.”

For Patricia, who preaches the desire for his team to be a family, a story like that had to resonate.

Patricia’s task now will be determining where to plug Ragnow in on the depth chart. Presumably, Ragnow will get first crack at center, where he started 19 games over his final two Arkansas seasons — a number that would have been higher had he not suffered a high-ankle sprain in game No. 7 last year.

However, Ragnow also made 13 starts at guard in 2015 and another in ’16. The Lions could opt to use him there, thus keeping Graham Glasgow at the center spot he held last season in the absence of Travis Swanson (another Arkansas product).

Anderson’s suggestion? Keep Ragnow in the middle.

“He is about as natural a center as you’re gonna find,” Anderson said. “He has position diversity because he’s 6-5 and change; he’s 315 but looks like he’s 280. He has the athleticism that if he needed to play tackle in the NFL, he could play tackle — no doubt in my mind that he could do that. … At center, (he) sees the big picture, he sees the rotation of the secondary, how that adjusts things up front, gets you into the right call. To have that value, it gets wasted a little bit if you’re playing at guard or at tackle, when everything’s going through the center’s mouth.”

Quinn said Thursday that the Lions will figure it out as they go. His team has a rookie minicamp in two weeks, but Ragnow won’t get to line up with Glasgow and the full offensive line until OTAs open later in May.

“The good thing is we’ve got two guys (Ragnow and Glasgow) that are versatile, that can play multiple spots,” Quinn said. “So, I think we have a lot of options.”

Say this for the pick, too: If the Lions wanted Ragnow, it had to happen where it did at No. 20. Multiple sources confirmed that the Bengals were likely to select Ragnow at No. 21, a selection they used instead on Ohio State center Billy Price.

Of course, almost no one outside of Detroit’s front office knew Ragnow was going to be a target. That includes Ragnow himself, who said that he hadn’t heard from the Lions following a combine interview with them. Ditto Anderson, who tells The Athletic that several teams called him over the past two weeks while performing due diligence on Ragnow, but that the Lions were not among them.

Quinn’s explanation for the secretive approach? Basically, that the Lions felt by combine’s end they could push Ragnow near the top of their board.

“Other than the injury,” Quinn said, “he was a real clean prospect that I didn’t really feel like we needed to do a whole lot of extra work on, in terms of visit here or private workout or any of those things.”

His Arkansas coaches would agree. They’ll tell you the Lions can be confident they drafted an NFL standout in the making, because that process started long before Thursday.

“I just knew there was something special about him in the way that he prepares,” Anderson said. “The one thing you forget when you go from (coaching) college to pro is there’s very little of the teaching somebody how to prepare in the NFL. Very rarely do you have to teach a guy how to prepare, how to take notes, watch tape, study tape. In college, that is a huge part of your job.

“And I think I noticed right away that here’s a guy who already prepared like a pro — the way he took notes, questions he asked, conversations we had. You could tell he had another understanding.”

The Lions are counting on it.

(Top photo: Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

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Chris Burke covers the Lions and the NFL draft for The Athletic Detroit. Previously, he spent six years as a national NFL writer for Sports Illustrated and before that, NFL editor for AOL's FanHouse.com. He also hosted the "On the Clock" NFL draft podcast. Follow Chris on Twitter @ChrisBurkeNFL.